Petition addressed to Mr. Bronisław Komorowski, Speaker of the Sejm

Petition addressed to Mr. Bronisław Komorowski, Speaker of the Sejm (the Lower House of the Polish Parliament) signed by the presidents of the three representative trade union confederations, NSZZ Solidarnosc, OPZZ and Forum of Trade Unions. The petition requests the Sejm to vote down the governmental bill on a new system of early retirements which might potentially by detrimental for large groups of employees working in unhealthy or extremely difficult conditions. A series of demonstrations and industrial actions are planned in concert by the three confederations in order to get through to the media with their message and to incline the Government and employers' organisations to the genuine dialogue with the trade unions.

On behalf of three representative trade union organisations - Trade Union Forum, OPZZ and NSZZ "Solidarnosc" - we wish to express our protest against the adopted method of proceedings in the Sejm on the governmental and parliamentary bills on social security (including health care), on the minimum wage, on negotiations of wage calculations, on bridge pensions and on capital pensions. We also protest against anti-worker provisions included in other acts of law. We demand honest social dialogue in which the rights and arguments of the social partners are discussed and taken into consideration within reasonable compromise.

The bill on the bridge pensions deprives hundreds of thousands of workers employed in special conditions of their right to early retirement. In contradiction to the statements of government representatives, broadly covered by the media, the rights to bridge pensions were not based on medical criteria and the list of jobs giving the right to early retirement was created in the privacy of ministerial offices by governmental experts and does not reflect the reality of working conditions.

On behalf of our organizations we declare that there is no public consent to the proposed solutions, and we demand that:

1. the Act on bridge pensions must not terminate the existing rights. It should include all workers who have been performing work in specific or hazardous conditions both before the reform of pension system and presently.
2. the hazard factors at work should be expanded by night shift work and high noise. The ILO recognized night shift work as hazardous and it was presented as such to the MPs by governmental experts, and the negative impact of noise on those in pre-retirement age was proven by eminent, internationally known Polish specialists.
3. the work of teachers be considered as work in special conditions as now.
4. a public hearing be held in order to present to the MPs and the public opinion the opinions of experts in labour medicine and occupational health and safety.

To sum up, we demand from the Parliament to reject the governmental bill on bridge pensions in its present shape, and from the government to return to the negotiation table for a real social dialogue in order to reach a compromise. To achieve this, the present act must be legally binding at least one more year. Moreover, we demand that:

1. the minimum wage be set at 50% of the average wage, we would like to remind as well that the European Parliament has recently recommended the minimum wage to be at the level of 60% of the average wage;
2. the limits on the increase of employees' wages imposed by the Act on negotiations on average increase of remunerations in company sector be removed;
3. the remuneration index in the budgetary sector be increased.

At the same time we want to draw your attention to the fact that proceedings and adoption of the so called package of bills on health care, prepared by the MPs of the governmental coalition, at each stage of the legislative process were an example of repeated violation of the principles of social dialogue and forcing through only those bills which originated with government coalition MPs.

We are of the opinion that the adopted acts give no guarantees of the constitutional right to health care of all citizens, regardless of their material situation.

Respectfully,
Wieslaw Siewierski, President, Trade Union Forum
Janusz Sniadek, President, NSZZ "Solidarnosc"
Jan Guz, President, OPZZ.